New Leaf Farms, LLC

Ed and Heather Devlin call their recent lifestyle change "an adventure for the whole family". An adventure that so far has included moving their residence from Fishers to Lebanon and starting New Leaf Farms, LLC in February 2008.

Yesterday afternoon, I visited with Ed and his two toddlers while his wife Heather was selling their pesticide-free and herbicide-free produce at the Plainfield Farmers Market. While I toured the greenhouses and planted fields which are less than 10 miles from my home, Ed's daughter kept me supplied with freshly picked, perfectly ripened blueberries from their berry patch. The blueberries are a joint venture between New Leaf Farms, LLC and LIFE Farm, LLC (which is owned by Indiana's organic gardening guru Jeff Evard and his business partner Art Sherwood). The blueberry bushes were purchased from an Indiana organic farm that went out of business and reestablished at New Leaf Farm. Jeff, who is well known for his beautiful certified organic produce grown in Bloomington, Indiana, has become Ed's mentor and is helping him develop a strategy for the farm and his business.

The Devlin's grow 16 varieties of tomatoes, lettuces, hot and sweet peppers, melons, carrots, beans, onions, herbs, blackberries, and blueberries. They currently sell their produce at the Plainfield Farmers' Market, Zionsville Farmers' Market, Traders' Point Creamery Farmers' Market (fruit only), and Gatewoods Vegetable Farm.

Ed says he learns something new everyday and is enthusiastic about the initial success of the venture. He hopes the farm will be a thriving business through which they can "feed our family and our community". Judging from their passion, commitment, and products, I think they're off to a great start.

New Leaf Farms, LLC
Ed and Heather Devlin
2575 S 200 E
Lebanon, Indiana 46052
newleaffarms@ilines.net
Phone: 765-482-3225 and 317-695-7117

Photos: Picture perfect produce growing at New Leaf Farms, LLC 

Find Indiana Local Food Fast

It's berry season! Many of our state's blueberry U-picks are opening this week; and blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, dewberries, and just about any other berry you can dream about are beginning to ripen.

To find berries at an Indiana U-pick, farm market, or farmers' market near you, visit Indiana Market Maker where you can search for these beautiful seasonal fruits and a whole host of other locally grown and produced foods by city, county, or state. You'll find the Indiana Market Maker site easy to use and very helpful for locating Indiana local foods and producers in your area.

We just started to harvest our blackberries for this year. Here's my favorite recipe for them: Pick, rinse, eat. Repeat!

Photo: Freshly picked blackberries from the Dirtpatch orchard

You Can!

When does a local food lover start thinking about what to make for dinner in December? NOW! With the summer harvest coming on strong it's not too early to begin thinking about preserving those beautiful fruits and vegetables for winter use.

If you have never canned food before, trust me, it's not that hard to do. It's a little time consuming, but it's not difficult at all once you know a few basic techniques. Just get a copy of the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and a home canning kit in the next week or two and spend some time getting familiar with the equipment and book's contents which include very user-friendly step-by-step instructions for food canning, freezing, and drying.

I didn't preserve foods up until about 10 years ago, so it's never too late to learn. If you have a friend or neighbor who knows how to do this, ask if you can spend sometime in the kitchen with her or him to learn the basics. You might also contact your county's Purdue Extension Office to see if there are food preservation classes being offered in your area. And The National Center for Home Food Preservation's website and Purdue's Extension Publications are full of great information for the first time canner.

Preserving your own food is worth the effort. You'll be rewarded with delicious, nutritious food all winter long.

Noshing on Nasturtiums

If you've ever wanted to grow an edible flower that takes very little effort, thrives on neglect, and is versatile in your kitchen let me introduce you to the nasturtium. These beautiful annuals love full sun, nutrient lacking soil, and can easily be grown in pots as well as small garden spaces. They like to be watered on a regular basis and do not do well under drought conditions. I've grown them both in my garden and in pots on my back patio with equal success.

Nasturtium blossoms range in color from pale, creamy peach to deep burgundy. As you can tell from the pictures, I tend to favor the bright orange and yellow ones. The leaves are generally a deep green although some varieties now have variegated leaves. And, depending on your preference, you can choose compact plants for a garden spot or trailing ones which are especially pretty in hanging baskets.

Both the blossom and leaves of the nasturtium are edible and have a slightly peppery flavor. As the summer goes on and the days become hotter, the flowers and leaves will become more spicy . I use the flower petals to punch up the color in a green salad, decorate cakes and cupcakes, float on a cream soup, and finely dice them to add to rice for a fun and conversation starting side dish. The leaves, which look like little lily pads, can be used in salads and they're also great when used instead of basil in your favorite pesto recipe. You can also finely chop the leaves and add them along with some of the finely chopped petals to cream cheese and use it on tea breads or crackers. The chopped leaves and petals can also be added to mayonnaise, with a bit of finely chopped garlic, for a sandwich spread. Just use the flowers and leaves sparingly in your recipes. A few tablespoons of leaves and flowers will be more than enough for a cup of cream cheese or mayonnaise.

Nasturtiums usually start producing around the first of July and will continue to produce blooms until the first frost. One of my favorite ways to preserve nasturtium flower petals is to make a nasturtium lemon butter which I then freeze for use later in the year and to give as gifts. The colorful butter can be served on a piece of grilled chicken or salmon, over mashed or baked potatoes, on savoy muffins or biscuits, or tossed with your favorite cooked vegetable. You'll find my instructions for making the butter and a recipe for a nasturtium rice side dish in the Summer Recipes Section of the site.

Photo One: Nasturtium Blossoms from the Dirtpatch Garden
Photo Two: Nasturtium Lemon Butter-almost too pretty to eat

Foraging Fever

Vince Fischer has been foraging for food for as long as he can remember. When he was a toddler, his mother would take him with her to pick dandelion leafs for dinner salads. He would often help his uncle pick and clean the dandelion flowers which his uncle used to make wine. As he grew into his teens, Vince continued to hone his foraging skills searching for edibles in the local countryside and wooded areas near his home.

At the age of 18, he moved to Indiana from Minnesota and for the past 50 years has been foraging the northern portion of the Hoosier state. In the spring he still harvests dandelions as he did years ago and picks wild strawberries, in the summer you'll find him delighting in gathering black raspberries, and in the fall he'll forage for nuts. He and his wife feast on in-season wild mushrooms and freshly picked field greens. One of his prized delicacies is prickly pear cactus which he finds growing wild in northern Indiana and likes to eat raw, in salads, or make into jam. His finds provide many tasty treats for the couple's dinner table, but he cautions that those new to foraging team up with an experienced forager to learn how to identify what's safe for human consumption. It's taken Vince years to learn what's edible and what to leave behind. The results of not knowing how to identify the truly safe foods, Vince cautions, can be deadly.

Vince is a life-long learner and still enjoys accompanying other experienced foragers on walks to benefit from their wisdom. "After all this time, I'm still excited when I'm introduced to a new forage delight, but as you might have guessed, the dandelion is still my favorite." Vince is now passing down his knowledge to the next generation, and his two grandsons, Reece and Logan, frequently join him on his trips. In fact, they are now often the ones to initiate the activity which Vince says "gets me off the couch and into the woods". 

Vince is a purist when it comes to preparing his foraging trips' harvests. He likes to keep things simple to let the flavor of the food shine through. When asked about a favorite recipe, Vince had a hard time choosing one but finally decided to share his recipe for "Sheep Sorrel Pie" which you'll find in the Summer Recipes Section of the site.

The best part of foraging according to Vince is the strong and loving relationship it has helped him build with his children and his grandchildren. "I can't remember the last time I went foraging with them and didn't have them telling their friends about the experience and how much fun they had." he told me in an email last week. "Sharing the journey is the ultimate reward of foraging for local wild foods in Indiana."   

Photos: Vince and Reece Fischer admire their bed of transplanted local cacti
            Logan Fischer bravely handles stinging nettles

Iron Chef Competiton: Local Food Battle

Move over Morimoto! On this coming Thursday, July 10, Indianappolis Ivy Tech Culinary students will be battling it out in their own version of Iron Chef as they prepare cold appetizers to be judged by a panel of culinary experts at the 38th and Meridian Farmers' Market. 

The students will be able to use any of the fresh, local, and in-season foods available at the market that day for their creations. The competition begins at 5:30 p.m. Come on out and see whose " Indiana Local Food" cuisine reigns supreme!

Photo: Fresh. local and in-season: sugar snap peas

Order Your Thanksgiving Turkey NOW!

Last November I received a number of emails from site visitors seeking local turkeys for their holiday dinners. Unfortunately, as many of our poultry producers will tell you, November is generally too late to be looking for your local Thanksgiving bird.

If you want to make sure you have an Indiana raised turkey reserved for Thanksgiving 2008, contact your local producer in the next week or two with your order.

Marie's Tree Top Sour Cherry Jam

Last Sunday Robert came into the kitchen carrying a small white plastic bucket of sour cherries.I could tell just by looking that there was something special about them. They were almost translucent and a much brighter red than any we'd been picking from our trees. He placed them on the counter and said, "Will you make jam with these?" I'd not been planning on making any sour cherry jam this year and we had just had that very conversation at breakfast in the morning, so I wondered why this request was now being made.

My husband is a man of few words. In the fifteen years that we have been together, I've learned that when he says something that I may find a bit curious there's always a deeper meaning behind it. He explained that these cherries were special and just had to be made into jam. When I pressed him a bit further, he told me that the cherries in the bucket were picked from the very top of the tree. He had never been able to harvest from the cherry tree tops before because the birds always got to the fruit before we did. This year was different and he was able to get a full bucket of them. But I knew there was something more than availability of the fruit, so I asked why I just shouldn't pit and freeze them like I'd done with the rest of the harvest earlier in the week. Finally the answer came, "Because, " he said handing me the small bucket, "my Mom always made jam with the fruit from the top of the tree. She said it was the sweetest because it was the most difficult to get."  And with than answer, I knew his mother, Marie, was right--the hardest things to get sometimes are indeed the very sweetest.

Photo: Robert's harvest of tree top cherries

Eat Your Greens!

At 3 (that's right THREE) calories, 51 mg. of calcium, and off the charts when it comes to vitamin A content at a whopping 2700 I.U.s per one half cup raw, chopped, Swiss Chard is my go to veggie for a healthy side dish. With chard so abundant in the markets and our garden right now, I am always looking for new ways to fix it.

I combined chard with chickpeas last night and it was a big hit. Pairing the crispy, pan sauteed chickpeas with the flavorful chard made for a delicious and easy side dish in about 15 minutes.

Try this one at home tonight! The recipe's in the Summer Recipes Section on the site.

Earlham College Student Creates Local Food Guide

Ben Hastil became so passionate about supporting local food systems after reading Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma that he decided " to see if it was really possible to eat locally from the food shed around Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana". The then college junior majoring in Peace and Global Studies, read the book in one of his environmental classes last semester and after doing some research not only decided it was possible but wanted to preserve the information he found for the local residents.

So, in three days during a pressure filled finals week, he created A Local Food Directory for Richmond, Indiana which includes a listing of producers within a 30 mile radius of the town. The user friendly guide's format is similar to the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice Fair Trade and Local Food Directory, a project that was part of an internship that Ben had with the Network during their directory's development.

Ben told me that he hopes the directory will achieve a few important objectives. First and foremost, he wants to inspire Richmond citizens to eat locally by providing them with the resources to do so in their community. But he also hopes his work will inspire others in Indiana to create similar directories for their towns. According to Ben, not only is it possible to eat well by choosing locally grown and produced foods, it's a critical step toward building safe, sustainable, and self-reliant food systems in our country.

Congratulations to Ben for developing this well-designed directory and for being an inspiration to others to do the same. If you have comments about the directory, Ben would like to hear from you. You can email him at hastibe@earlham.edu.